Mercury Marine's new X-Site is the company's mighty performance
grounds where technicians and engineers dial in, rev-up and rip
across the water to perfection. -- By Richard Crowder


(A bird's-eye view of Mercury Marine's new X-Site Facility.)

I¡¯m in Panama City, Florida in a rental car the weekend prior to the OSS World Championships in Destin, Florida, and on the phone with the affable Clay Gaillard, Mercury Racing¡¯s X-Site Racing Operations Manager. ¡°Turn right at the first street past the third light,¡± he directed. ¡°Go right to the end of the street. You¡¯ll see a big old rusting barge straight ahead on land and to the left, a large, new non-descript looking building behind a fence. That¡¯s us. There are no identifying signs anywhere,¡± he said. ¡°Come right in and tell the guard I¡¯m expecting you.¡± I thought I had taken the right turn, but as I proceeded slowly down the narrow street overhung with tree limbs that I thought would be really tough for any wide-beam rig to navigate, I was sure I was going the wrong way. Then through a jogging intersection and another block further, I came to the end of the street and sure enough, saw the hulking barge on land. This indeed was the right spot and I was quickly ushered inside the gates and into a pleasant and very functional office area where Clay greeted me. Recalling the glamour and secrecy of the former Lake X, this is not quite what I had expected, but then again, I don¡¯t know just what I should have expected. ¡°We¡¯re here to get a job done,¡± said Clay. ¡°We don¡¯t need to be fancy to do that ¨C just efficient.¡± In retrospect, he¡¯s absolutely right. The site seems to be perfect for the job at hand. Since 1957, Mercury Marine¡¯s famed Lake X on a relatively small inland lake near St. Cloud, roughly in more central Florida, served the purpose for nearly 50 years. As the top secret testing facility for (originally) Carl Kiekhaefer¡¯s outboard engines, the advances in engine technology outgrew the usefulness of Lake X¡¯s six-mile course and mostly smooth waters. Today¡¯s 160 or more¨Cmiles per hour boats and the need for varying sea conditions plus salt water testing required a new site. In late 1971, Mercury opened ¡°MerCabo,¡± a saltwater test facility in Placida, Florida, where secret saltwater endurance testing was achieved, but concerns about manatees and the population explosion in the area, which sent land prices sky high, called for a new, combined facility. Mercury Marine analyzed 52 potential sites from Brownsville, Texas, to North Carolina before choosing the 81/2-acre old shipyard property on Watson Bayou in Panama City. Prior to its opening in the spring of 2004, the entire shipyard remains on the X-Site property had to be removed and extensive dredging and waterfront development needed to be done. Approximately 40 slips were built, along with a shorewall, launch ramp, and travel lift slip. Additionally, extensive rack storage buildings, fueling facilities, plus a single, very large, multi-bay rigging and service building were constructed. Since its opening, X-Site had been managed by Mercury¡¯s long-time and well known Bill Harris. Clay, who has been involved with marketing and communications with Mercury Marine in Fond du Lac since 2003, seized the opportunity to take over managing the racing side of X-Site a few months ago. ¡°Prior to joining Mercury, I was in the rodeo business,¡± he explained. ¡°I was in the business for about 10 years, mainly with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, I took care of marketing, public relations, and event production. Contacts there led me to the opportunity with Mercury in Fond du Lac, and then here. It¡¯s great.¡± He seems totally in his element. ¡°There are two separate facilities here. The mostly internally-focused R & D functions related to outboards and sterndrives from Mercury Marine¡¯s Fond du Lac or Stillwater operations, and essentially the same processes and services for Mercury Racing. The latter is my responsibility,¡± he says. ¡°We do R & D endurance testing on the Mercury Racing side and we have the race shop where, for a fee, we do work on select customers¡¯ boats. There are five techs, including Tech Supervisor Scott Childs, two techs in training that are principally endurance boat drivers, a generalist expert and trouble shooter, and one of the most pre-eminent drive re-build expert in the country, Jeff Hopper,¡± he beams. ¡°Like our facility¡¯s predecessor, Lake X, X-Site is a place where professional racers can come do some serious fine tuning and dial-in on their boats,¡± Gaillard said. ¡°We also work on some consumer boats, though we¡¯re not really open to the public. When we agree to take on a consumer boat it¡¯s usually a situation where there is a complex problem or goal involved and the boat has been referred to us by a boat builder, dealer or Mercury Racing representative.¡± In fact, a couple of race boats were in the shop at the time and they were there doing just that. Michael Stancombe, with his father George, are the team owners of Peppers Racing, were there, along with the CMS Motorsports contingent consisting of owner Bob Bull, driver Mitch Miller, and crew chief Dave Place. Randy Scism of MTI was also there with the CMS Motorsports crew to assist with the pre-race set-up. On the R & D side for product development and validation, ¡°the engineer writes a Test Request that specifies what is needed,¡± Clay says. ¡°We carry out the test in a very standardized manner, logging detailed information on the performance of the engine or component each day, and we produce a Test Incident Report (T.I.R.) on absolutely anything that occurs that is out of the ordinary to give the engineers and technicians working on the project all of the information they need to make the next step. We will install the engine in or on the boat and may have to run it up to eight hours a day, perhaps for a total of 200 or 300 hours at wide open throttle (WOT), or perhaps for duty cycle runs that require so many minutes at so much throttle and then change settings, etc., depending on the test requirement. Reliability and durability are the main test factors, but of course performance is a huge part of it as well. Between the Racing side of the facility and the Mercury Marine R&D side, we have about a dozen test boat drivers here running at least five days a week.¡± ¡°New product development is the main thrust,¡± he says, ¡°but every time a part is altered, or a vendor of that part is changed, or the specs or manufacturing processes are changed, there is a requirement for testing. That¡¯s what keeps us busy most of the time.¡±

Race teams such as WHM Motorsports, which competes in the Offshore Super Series,
often come to X-Site for testing and maintenance.


Hammer of the Gods ¨C Technican Supervisor Scott Childs preps
a Mercury Racing 525 sterndrive before installation.


A Spectre cat powered by twin Mercury Racing 300 XS OptiMax Outboards
running across the St. Andrews Bay near the X-Site.

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